BtS n00b questions?
 

So, I just got BtS for my birthday last week and I've been playing some to get a feel for the new things in this expansion.

A couple of BtS n00b questions:

1. What's the current version you guys all use? There's 3.02 version and an unofficial 3.09 version going around. Which is the 'correct' version?

2. I want the numbers back in the city bars. Unfortunately in BtS default they're not there. How do I get the production details back?

3. Those 7 corporation types, are they worth any effort? I played around with some of them last night, and they cost huge loads of money, while the benefit (that I can see) is fairly minimal...

4. Espionage. Do you guys actually use it? I see an extensive espionage system, but very few really beneficial options for spies. Also, I had a massive espionage points lead (2:1 ratio), and I still had quite a few spies coming through to poison my wells.

5. How does the apostolic palace work? I razed it before it got around to doing something, so I didn't get to see it in action.

6. "Preserve forest" - What use does it have?

Thanks in advance. I may think of a few more in the next few days...

I ain't got much experience myself, just played a couple of games.

1. 3.13, just run the update to patch.
2. There is an unofficial patch at CFC which fixes things. But apparently it will not be used in Beam's PB.
3. Nope, not worth the hassle IMHO. Unless you spread it to foreign lands. Then, you can get some gold.
4. It is good, if you develop it early and right, you will be able to see almost all map around industrial era.
5. It is too powerful against AI. You can build it, spread your religion to each AI but only to a single city so that they have very few votes and then win the elections since you can have a lot of votes this way.
6. Not much, pretty useless IMO.

Will try to answer a few:

1. 3.13 should be correct.

3. I think they are only of use sometimes. So, you might wanna use them in 1 of 50 games...

4. I think it is a nice feature. Especially knowing what others are researching is very nice...

5. Somehow like a small UN with no diplo win. The number of votes one has is set by the number of citizens(?) of the state(?) religion of the ApoPal builder. Options are to stop a war or to assign a city to the one with more culture there or to stop trading. All concerning the religion.

7. Right now I am in a standard sized map game and all 7 (6 now) civ were civs from the BtS expansion. Is this something that I'll have to get used too? No original civs in the games?

8. Is it just me or are Levee's very powerful? Which means dikes are even better, right?

9. The scenario's: Are they any good this time?

7. Do you mean you clicked random and then only new leaders came up? i've noticed a fairly good mix in my games, maybe depends on what level your playing.

8. Levee's are pretty powerful yeah but you can only build them if your built on a river which in some games is fairly hard to do.

9. I like some of the scenarios, theres a lot more variety in them this time, whether you'll like them or not depends on you really.

3. Corporations also make money when you spread them through your cities. I like them. :) But it's more like a perk, not a very powerful tool.

4. I think this'll be extremely important in multiplayer! I don't know what you can do to prevent missions against you.

8. Dikes are very powerful, but you can only build them with Steam Engine, which comes rather late.

9. I've played Age of Ice and Final Frontier and liked them both a lot. :)

you can stop them by performing the counter espionage thing and by building that thing which increases the points required by 50%

4. Having more EP's than an opponent is useful in a number of ways. First the passive effects like seeing the demographics, research and city visability are all handy. Second since spies use the EP's you have against an opponent to perform missions it reduces the cost if you have more then him.

The only way to stop a mission is to make the cost in EP's to high for your opponent. This can be done by having more EP's, units fortified in your cities (more units = more cost and more chance of failure/capture). My personal favorite is to have a spy fortified in my own cities, works the same as have units stationed there but you don't need as many for the same effect. Finally there are buildings which increase the cost.

9. Final Frontier is excellent. Haven't had time to try the others properly yet.

I must be doing something wrong then, 'cause I got 5 per turn gold from the headquarters for every corporation expansion I established in other cities, but the loss of money from both founding the corporation expansion as well as the cost per turn of said corporation expansion was much more than the louzy 5 gpt.

[confused] The city with headquarters gets 4gpt for every city the corporation is spread to. And that counts for at least three corporations, but perhaps not all.